Video playback includes decoding of a video stream, performing different types of post processing on the decoded frames, and then rendering the video frame (image) for display. The post processing is intended to enhance the perceived visual quality of the pixels in the video frame. Current video playback pipelines work on a frame by frame basis where a host processor is involved with providing the frames one by one to the video pipeline and synchronizing the decoding, post processing and rendering functions. Furthermore, current decode engines write the reconstructed frame in decode order while current post processing engines read and render the reconstructed frames in display order. The reordering of the frames from decode order to display order is accomplished by storing the frames temporarily in memory. The host processor is involved in the reordering of the frames from those written to memory to those read from memory. Accordingly the host processor is active for large portions of the video pipeline. Furthermore, memory resources and bandwidth are required for this process.